Asparagus Festival starts today despite late harvest

St George and Gus the Asparagus bearing Vale of Evesham spears - image: Wychavon District Council

The annual Asparagus Festival in the Vale of Evesham will get under way today (23 April, St George's Day) with the Great English Asparagus Run.

Three Morgan cars will take a delivery of Vale of Evesham asparagus, grown under glass, to the Fortnum & Mason department store in London.

St George, Gus the Asparagus, the AsparaFairy and the AsparaMancer will be in attendance to see them off at the National Trust-owned Fleece Inn near Evesham. Further festivities include children’s morris dancing and "Asparazumba".

"But the big event will be the AsparaFest in June, which has taken over from the single festival day," Wychavon District Council representative Chris Ayliffe said.

The weekend-long event on 1-2 June will be "like an extreme village fete" according to its new dedicated website, www.asparafest.co.uk.

A series of other events will take place between now and Midsummer, the traditional end of the asparagus season. See www.britishasparagusfestival.org for details.

This year's harvest is expected to be around two weeks late due to the prolonged winter weather. Grower Paul Haydon of Birlingham Nurseries near Pershore said only 10 per cent of his covered asparagus crop had been harvested by last week.

Diffused light can increase the production of tomatoes by up to 10%, even when this brings a drop in the overall light transmission into the glasshouse, according to a report by Wageningen University & Research (WUR).